A team of Japanese and Indonesian researchers have succeeded in capturing on film for the first time ever a newly born baby Coelacanth, or a prehistoric fish, experts see as a missing link between fish and more amphibian animals. The team led by Masamitsu Iwata and Koutaro Yoshimura have found the rare species swimming at 161 meters under surface of the ocean near the Manado coast of Sulawesi, Indonesia on October 6th using a deep sea camera, Japan's Fukushima Marine Science Museum Center announced on Monday.Adult Coelacanths have been captured on film before, but this is the first time a juvenile has been seen alive and on video. Furthermore an autopsy on a coelacanth fished up in 1991 off the coast of Mozambique, Africa revealed that it was pregnant with a 30-centimeter-long babies in its body. The small coelacanth captured on film last month and measured with a laser beam was only one centimeter longer than that and is thus believed by the researchers to have been recently born. The adult fish are known to grow up to 2 meters long and weigh 80 kilos. Once believed extinct 65 million years ago, live coelacanths were first discovered in 1938 in the deep seas off Africa and later in Indonesia but much of its life cycle still remains a mystery. Conservationists say a proper count is extremely difficult but a speculative estimate of 1,000 or more specimens still roam the deep sea crevases of the ocean just as they did before even the dinosaurs roamed the earth.
